The Last Dinner Party

Words by Willow Shields

You know that feeling when you finally do something and everything just makes sense? Like when you have that first perfect kiss with someone or when you drive really, really fast. And it just clicks and you're left thinking, oh, that's why I’m here. This song is that feeling, wrapped with silk ribbon into a perfect 3 minute box.

I don’t know what I was expecting from The Last Dinner Party’s debut. I honestly wanted to hate it. They’ve been on my radar for a year or so now, hearing about them through whispers in the back of dark rooms, “I went to that show the other night, it changed my life” “did you know they’re all models?” “oh yeah, they had to change their name, no idea why.” I wanted to hate them so bad. Alas, I want to stop listening to Nothing Matters like a Shakespearean man wants to leave his young lover. I don't.

My immediate reaction to listening to this song was to, genuinely, fall to my knees. On my kitchen floor. And lay there until the song finished. Nothing Matters somehow manages to make you want to dance, cry, scream, run, thrash around in the bath and then dance again. It’s a heartbreakingly groovy song, and it's catchy, too. On my probably twelfth listen now, I cannot sit still and refuse to not sing along to the chorus. I can't get over it. It’s a perfect encapsulation of being a young woman in the current day and age, for me at least. I’ve never been more possessed to write about a song before, like a Quaker in a meeting, the words have to come out.

Everything about The Last Dinner Party is perfect, their firm style identity as a unit, their aloof reputation, THIS SONG. Nothing Matters is an unequivocally flawless debut. From the soft beginning, the building tension, the ultimate crescendo. What feels like an incredibly intimate song will be screamed in small dingy rooms, and chanted in stadiums in years to come.

I can’t adequately express the pure visionary of this band, so I will direct you to the music video, that is all.

Kipp Boucher